Why are South Floridians watching less live TV?

Chances are that if you live in greater Fort Lauderdale and Miami, you’re watching less than four hours of live TV a day and tuning more into your DVR and the Internet for programming and videos.

Those are some of the highlights from a new South Florida report by Nielsen, the TV ratings company, which examined some of Fort Lauderdale and Miami’s viewing and lifestyle habits from 2012 to 2013.

On average, South Floridians watched about 4 hours and 17 minutes of live TV in 2013 compared with three hours and 59 minutes the year before. Our time shifted TV viewing grew by 14 percent, from 21 minutes to 24 minutes during the same period.

The report also found that the Fort Lauderdale-Miami market ranked as one of the top 10 smartphone markets nationally with 73 percent penetration. And the number of folks who say they watch TV on a tablet or smartphone has increased by 17 percent.

Other insights about our activities – 26.6 percent of us visited Disney World, another 26 percent visited an Italian restaurant and 22.3 percent stopped by Zoo Miami while 14 percent of us visited an art museum or a Marlins game.

Through these kinds of new reports, Nielsen is looking to show the uniqueness of some of its top TV markets by looking at consumer and spending behavior in each.

The company still tracks live TV usage and here are the latest ratings of the most watched programs in Fort Lauderdale/Miami from Jan. 27 to Feb. 2.

Of note, American Idol's Thursday show on Jan. 30 came in #13 with 141,000 total viewers and the Wednesday show had 134,000 viewers (or 20th place.) WSVN's newscast, which followed American Idol that Wednesday also came in #13 with 140,000 viewers.